1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to information delivery systems. In particular, it relates to the delivery of information to an individual based on the individual's movements, and/or the individual's interests, and/or the time the individual is at a particular location, and/or the unique aspects of a particular location.
2. Background Art
While advertising has a substantial positive effect on any business, the cost of advertising can be a significant portion of the operating budget of any business. As a result, it is very important for any business operation to maximize the effectiveness of its advertisements. A primary disadvantage associated with conventional advertising and/or the delivery of noncommercial information is that it is unfocused such that it reaches a broad general audience rather than the smaller defined audience desired by the advertiser or other information provider.
Traditional advertising on the Internet uses hyperlinks in the form of banner ads. Companies using this type advertising have found that it has limited effectiveness because many individuals who visit Web sites ignore these banners, while the advertising companies pay for them regardless of whether the visitor clicks on their ads or not. It would be desirable to have a method of focusing advertisements on the most receptive individuals.
Another method of delivering advertisements for coupons to an individual using the Internet is through email. This is accomplished usually after someone visits a site, fills out an online form, and submits the form to be processed usually through a form handler. While this method may be effective for existing customers who may have loyalty to the advertising company, it can be ineffective for new customers because they may not take the time to enter any information. In addition, a substantial number of Internet users routinely discard advertising email, as a form of junk mail, without ever reading it. As a result, even if an advertiser identifies the potential customer and sends email, a substantial amount of that email will never be read. It would be desirable to have a system in which the likelihood of the potential customer reading the advertising communication would be relatively high.
Another problem associated with conventional Internet marketing is that due to the proliferation of Web sites, new companies engaging in e-commerce often find that they can only obtain Web addresses that are not the company's name, are not appropriate for the company, or do not seem to be the related to the goods or services sold by the company. The disadvantage of a poor Web address is that it increases the likelihood that the company will lose sales at their site since a potential visitor wouldn't think of such an unlikely address for the company, and often won't use a search engine to find the correct address. Ultimately, anything that makes it less convenient or harder for someone to link to a Web site will cost that company business. This inability to have a Web address that adequately reflects the company and/or its name is due to several factors and is one of many problems solved by the invention. Some of these factors are: 1) a limited number of characters are permitted for the Web address; 2) the high level of interest in the Internet has caused many entities to acquire rights in Web addresses which would better suit other companies and which are not used by the company that acquired them; 3) a company can acquire otherwise identical Web addresses which end in .com or .net and use both of those addresses to hyperlink to a single Web site, which further limits the number of available names; 4) there are many similar and confusing Web site addresses, for example Web addresses which are identical except for special characters such as dashes or underscores, which makes it harder to remember the Web site address; and 5) simply not remembering the Web site address. It would be desirable to have a method of using the Internet which is independent of the individual knowing the actual Internet Web site address.
Unfocused information is that information which is broadcasted to the general public in an indiscriminate manner. For example, a conventional television, radio, billboard, or print advertisement would be received by many individuals, most of whom would have no interest in the particular product or service in the advertisement. As a result, a significant portion of the cost associated with presenting a particular conventional advertisement is wasted since the advertisement is presented to the wrong individuals. It would be desirable to have an effective method of focusing advertising and distributing information to a well-defined set of individuals who represent the target group desired by the advertiser or information distributor.
Attempts to improve the effectiveness of advertising have involved the acquisition of information directly from individuals which describes their interests and resources. This can be done in one of several ways. For example, when an individual fills out a warranty card after a purchase, the warranty card typically contains numerous questions about the purchaser. These questions may inquire as to an individual's age, income, and interests. This demographic information may then be used to identify the most likely purchaser of a particular product or service. Once the group containing the most likely purchasers is identified, direct advertising can be presented to those purchasers. Hopefully this process will result in a greater percentage of purchasers for a given advertisement, which will in turn result in more effective use of the funds allocated to a business's advertising budget due to the resulting increase in sales.
The disadvantage associated with this type of marketing is that many types of economic activity are relevant to a particular individual depending on where that individual may be at a given time. For example, if an individual is an avid golfer, the computer may have this fact in its database. This would allow golf related advertisements from local merchants to be directed to the individual at the individual's residence etc. However, if the individual was traveling, local merchants in the area the individual was visiting would not be aware of the individual's presence and would have no reason to attempt to market their products to the visiting individual. It would be desirable for local merchants to have a method of contacting individuals visiting their locale at the time the individual was visiting such that the individual could take advantage of products and services provided by the local merchants.
With the advent of the Internet and e-commerce, the advantages and disadvantages of advertising have both increased. On the one hand, a small private or commercial entity is now able to reach a global market which was heretofore unavailable to any but the largest economic concerns. On the other band, there is no value for a small entity to have access to a global market when that entity may in fact only be able to provide particular goods or services in a limited geographic area. For example, a restaurant's clientele must be in the local area to take advantage of the restaurant's services. Further, if an individual is visiting the area of the local merchant, the individual may not have any knowledge of the local merchants' products and services. Due to this, not only do many local merchants not have an extensive out of area business due to e-commerce, they are also unable to take advantage of visitors to the area. It would be desirable to have a method of using the Internet to detect the presence of a visitor to a local area, and once the individual is detected, to allow the local merchants to advertise directly to the individual when the individual is in that area.
While addressing the basic desirability of advertising, the prior art has failed to provide a focused method of distributing information, either commercial advertising or other information, which is focused on a select target group of individuals, and can provide information to those individuals which is dependent on the time and/or the location that the individuals are in a given area